AARP Washington State Podcast

Would you like advice on your retirement savings from the Chair of the Economics Department at Harvard? In this episode, Dr. David Laibson tells how to build your financial resources, the principles he uses to help manage Harvard's employee pension fund, and how we as a society can make it easier for everyone to build a nest egg.

In this episode, we go into the shadowy work of Dark Web identity theft and frauds with con man turned cybersecurity consultant Brett Johnson. Called "The Original Internet Godfather" by the Secret Service, Brett was recently featured on the cover of the AARP Bulletin This podcast is the extensive interview behind the story in the Bulletin. You'll hear Brett sit down with the article's author, our WA state director and fraud expert Doug Shadel, to explain his upbringing in a criminal family, his long history of scams, how he found the Dark Web, how he helped start methods for criminal activity, including the gang "Shadowcrew", how criminals steal your identity online and sell it among themselves, and what steps you can take today to protect yourself. You can read the article from this interview online at aarp.org/Bulletin.

This episode is a live TeleTown Hall hosted by our AARP Washington State Director and national fraud expert Doug Shadel, with special guest Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson. A TeleTown Hall is like a radio call-in show, where we take questions by phone from AARP members around the state.

In this episode, Doug and AG Ferguson talk about the latest developments in scams and frauds, including the new laws that allow you to "freeze" your credit for free. We talk about why that's a very effective way to protect your identity from being stolen. Plus, we talk about the work of the Attorney General's Office in fighting fraud and take calls from AARP members from across the state.

In this episode, we learn about the Washington Retirement Marketplace, a program of the WA Dept. of Commerce, that aims to give small business employers, employees, gig workers, entrepreneurs or anyone without a retirement plan at work, the ability to set up a payroll deduction retirement savings plan easily and cheaply. We talk with Carolyn McKinnon, the founding director of the program, and learn how the Marketplace can be an answer to our retirement savings crisis. If you'd like to save through your paycheck or if you'd like to provide a savings plan to your employees, this interview is for you.

You can learn more about the Retirement Marketplace at http://www.retirementmarketplace.com/

Would you like romance, better relationships, better sex and more fun in your life? Dr. Pepper Schwartz, relationship expert and UW professor, gives her best advice for those of us over age 50 in this episode. We talk about travel and how it can rekindle romance. We talk about dating and finding new love. We talk about the physical changes of aging. We talk about how to be more attractive at any age and ways to find the right person for you. And we talk about how to spice up the relationship you already have.

Dr. Schwartz is a national authority, with best selling books and many TV appearances, on shows such as Oprah and Dr. Phil. She's also been AARP's official Relationship Ambassador and a consultant for several online dating services, including PerfectMatch.com.

Bob Roth is one of the most sought after meditation teachers in the country. He's a leading authority on Transcendental Meditation, having taught celebrities such as Oprah, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as thousands of veterans, schoolchildren, prisoners and just regular people. He visited Seattle in his role as head of the David Lynch Foundation, which promotes TM programs across American. We talked the benefits of meditation, what's involved in learning and practicing and a bit about the Beatles and the Marareshi. For more on Transcendental Meditation, visit www.tm.org and www.davidlynchfoundation.org.

Are older people happier? Can the last third of our lives be our best years, both for ourselves and for contribution to society? Dr. Laura Carstensen says yes! Dr. Carstensen is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity at Stanford University. She maintains that the doubling of our lifespans over the past century could be the greatest cultural achievement in human history. But we've got to take advantage of it. Hear Dr. Carstensen's thoughts on how to be happy and productive in old age in this interview with AARP's Doug Shadel. Learn more about Dr. Carstensen and the Stanford University Center for Longevity at longevity.stanford.edu.

Do you want to be happier? Gretchen Rubin is a researcher and best-selling author, best known for the book "The Happiness Project". In this episode, we talk about concrete steps you can take now to be happier, at any age. One day on a bus, Gretchen realized that although she had everything she needed to be satisfied with her life, and she wasn't really unhappy, she certainly wasn't happy. She launched The Happiness Project to find out why and what to do about it.

Since then, she's been interviewed by Oprah and walked with the Dalai Lama. Her subsequent books include "The Four Tendencies", about better understanding ourselves and what would make us happy, and "Better Than Before", on how changing small everyday habits make a big difference in happiness.

In this interview, we talk extensively about how life's transitions, like retirement or an an empty nest, can be opportunities to make the changes you need to be happier and how older people often develop the self-knowledge necessary to be truly happy.

Enjoy this discussion of how research and Gretchen's personal experiments can make you happier. You can learn more about Gretchen at gretchenrubin.com/